Satyam investors lost Rs. 20,000 crores: SEBI

A court here was informed on Friday that the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had estimated a loss of over Rs. 20,0000000000 to investors in Satyam scrip worldwide after the January 7 confessional statement about fraud by the former chairman of the company B. Ramalinga Raju. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) stated this in a petition to the designated CBI court while objecting to the bail petitions of former Price Waterhouse auditors S. Gopalakrishnan and Talluri Srinivas. The public prosecutor of CBI T. Venkataramana also informed the magistrate N. Victor Immanuel that the market value erosion suffered by investors in January alone was Rs. 13,5000000000. Quoting investigations by the SEBI into the scam, Mr. Venkataramana said the auditors played a lead role in creation of artificial demand for Satyam scrip by certifying overstated financial results of the company as true. They did not raise a single objection to irregularities in financial statements in 32 audit meetings since their appointment as statutory auditors of the company. There was a strong prima facie case against the auditors and their release on bail at this stage could jeopardise investigation as they could tamper with data fed into computers, some of which were yet to be seized. They were found to have frequently changed their password while working on computers, Mr. Venkataramana said. He also informed the court that various investigating agencies had so far seized 53,000 documents relating to Satyam Computers and other group companies. These had to be scrutinised thoroughly. Tough task The magistrate also heard a separate plea by the CBI seeking seven-day custody for interrogation of Ramalinga Raju, his brother Rama Raju, former Chief Financial Officer of the company Srinivas Vadlamani and the two auditors. The prosecution informed him that the fraud was mostly committed through computers. Fingerprints constituted the password of the accused. Incidentally, seven persons had a common password which they used sparingly. The CBI had to undertake a technical job of decoding information from computers and servers. Orders reserved The defence counsel opposed custody of the accused as it was already sanctioned to the Crime Investigation Department (CID) which hitherto investigated the fraud. Mr. Immanuel reserved orders on the bail applications of auditors and the CBI’s request for custody to March 9.